Mister Well Adjusted
by ColorOfAngels
Summary: So it turns out Mister Well Adjusted was in fact, not so well adjusted. A look into the mind of Princeton Plainsboro's Head Oncologist.... tiny spoiler for Resignation...


A/N Once again something a little bit different for me…. I seem to be doing this a lot lately….. But this was inspired by a conversation I had with my mom who was talking to her friend who is a doctor saying that while there are doctors who are as good as House, they have a survival rate of practically zero because by the time a patient actually gets to them its usually too late…. And this got me thinking about Wilson and his character as a doctor that we don't usually get to see in the show since he is usually busy being House's enabler as he so delicately put it himself…. Okay enough of my ramblings…

Oh and very minor spoilers for Resignation so stop reading now if you don't want to know….

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Dr. James Wilson, Head of Oncology at Princeton Plainsboro Teaching Hospital flipped through the pile of purple folders that that littered his desk. But he didn't see the names attached to each patient file, only numbers in the form of units of time.

Three (years)

Eight (months)

Twelve (weeks)

Thirty (days)

Forty-eight (hours)

Every patient he had seen today had a death sentence. It was simply a matter of time.

And House wondered why he was on anti-depressants.

So it turns out Mister-Well-Adjusted was in fact, not so well adjusted. Although how well adjusted could someone be for them to do what he does every day and not be depressed?

He spent so much time as the personal Jiminy Cricket and faithful sidekick for everyone's favorite misanthropic malcontent, that he believed that many of the people in his life forgot that he too was a doctor. And a damn good one at that. After all he didn't become a department head on his boyish good looks and charm.

But his turn as the head of his department was different than House's. Oncology was intrinsically different than Diagnostics and there were times he envied the man he considered his best friend.

Because he wasn't so brilliant at his job that he was able to spend his life bopping from one rare and interesting disease of the week to another, where each patient was simply a puzzle waiting to be solved. As the head of his department, he didn't have the luxury of being able to diagnose an illness, deign to prescribe the correct course of treatment, and be able to go home at night knowing that they would soon be cured and would soon leave the hospital of their own volition, knowing he would never see them again as they reentered the world to live a full and fulfilling life.

No, he was so brilliant at his job that he only received the patients that the doctors in his own department, and doctors all up and down the east coast were no longer capable of treating. The patients that were referred to him were often on their last legs, patients who could only hope for (a miracle) a little more time.

There were times that he wished he wasn't as good at his job. There were days he would give anything to have a caseload full of the standard cancers, if any type of cancer could be considered standard. He wished he had patients with cancers that were easily detected in their early stages with high survival rates. But no, those patients never made it to his door.

He could count on one hand the number of patients he had in the last year that he knew he would never see again, and not because they had gone out the back door instead of the front.

He knew when he specialized in oncology that death and the dying would be fixtures in his life. If he had had a problem with that, he would have gone into plastic surgery or podiatry. It only took a few practically debilitating experiences early in his career that taught him the importance of not getting attached to patients.

He was just as good at remaining detached as House, perhaps he could be considered even more skilled at this since his patients would never even realize that he didn't care about them beyond their disease. It sounded cruel and harsh even to his own ears and a large part of him refused to even acknowledge its validity, but it was true. Deep down he knew that. It was a survival mechanism that he had been dependent on for years to be able to do his job.

And so he became a master at compartmentalizing.

He the kind and trustworthy doctor with the impeccable bedside manner that not only remembered the first name of every patient, but remembered to ask how their husband, sister, grandchild, son, miniature schnauzer, second cousin's daughter's girl (insert loved one here) was doing.

He was the best oncologist in New Jersey that in the solitude of his own mind did in fact think of patients only as cases. Who focused on only the disease and not the person whose body it was ravaging. Whose only concern was repelling an imminent death for a couple more years (experiential treatments), months (drug trials), weeks (final goodbyes), days (tears), hours (breaths), seconds (heartbeats).

But there was only so much compartmentalizing, only so much you can shove away in each dark crevice of your being before you run out of room and they start to overflow into one another. When diseases gained faces, and cases had names. When your walls begin to crack and the careful façade you present to the world seeps into your mind (thoughts) and heart (soul).

And that's why he had started taking anti-depressants.

So he wasn't Mister-Well-Adjusted, he thought as he put on his coat and picked up his briefcase. At least he had made it through another day.

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A/N So this was my first real character analysis based fic and I think it came out alright, at least I enjoyed writing it and I hope you enjoyed reading it… I know I promised a new chapter of I Do? I Don't but I was a bit blocked on that and this wanted to be written instead…. But I swear that chapter will be up soon…. But in the mean time let me know what you thought of this one! 


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